Economics and dating

It was the words “eligible bachelor” that caught my eye. But I love it when economic theories are applied to relationships:

Where have all the most appealing men gone? Married young, most of them—and sometimes to women whose most salient characteristic was not their beauty, or passion, or intellect, but their decisiveness.

But in this case, the discussion of choice is most interesting: The fact that men are not dragged kicking and screaming into marriage, but rather that they choose to ask, also that women, according to this piece, initiate the asking, and then can choose to say yes or no. Both men and women have a whole lot of autonomy in entering into this thing called marriage. Alas, it eradicates the long suffering looks for being forced into the institution.